7 Mythical Creatures Science Says Actually Existed

The monsters that terrified ancient civilizations were not made up. Every single one had a real animal behind it. Greeks wrote about worms the size of a car. Slavic villagers feared frogs big enough to swallow a man. Native Americans drew birds with wingspans the size of a plane. Today I am going to show you 7 mythical creatures that science proved were actually real Before we start, hit that subscribe button right now so you don't miss the next one! 7. The Indus Worm 2400 years ago, ancient Greek writers documented something terrifying. A giant worm living underground so large it was being hunted for the flammable oil inside its body. Nobody took it seriously. It sounded like pure fantasy. Then, paleontologists found Arthropleura, the largest land invertebrate that has ever existed on this planet. It lived 290 million years ago, before dinosaurs even existed. It was not a worm. It was a millipede. But it was the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, 8 feet long, almost 3 feet wide. Scientists believe ancient people found Arthropleura fossils buried in rock and could not explain what they were looking at. A creature so large and so unlike anything alive that the only explanation was a monster. The Greeks also saw people extracting petroleum from the ground in the Middle East and could not explain that either. So they connected the two mysteries and created the Indus Worm, a giant underground creature that produced flammable liquid. Two things they did not understand, one mythical creature that explained both. Could there be other creatures still buried in rock that ancient people already described before science ever found them? 6. Vodyanoy In Slavic mythology across Eastern Europe, a creature called Vodyanoy haunted rivers and lakes. It looked like a man-sized frog. Villagers believed that anyone who saw it near water on a cold night would die and that the village where it appeared would suffer catastrophe shortly after. For centuries, people across Russia, Poland and Czechoslovakia told the exact same story. Then scientists found Belzebufo, the devil frog. It lived 66 million years ago, the largest frog that has ever existed on this planet, the size of a beach ball. Its skull was built like an armored shield. Its bite was powerful enough to crush small dinosaurs, a frog that ate dinosaurs. It went extinct at the same time as the dinosaurs, during the mass extinction 66 million years ago. But Slavic legends are incredibly specific. The creature always appears near water. It always looks like an enormous frog. It is always deadly. Could ancient Europeans have found devil frog fossils near riverbanks and built their monster stories around what they saw? 5. Imela Antuka The Congo rainforest is the second largest rainforest on Earth after the Amazon, but far less explored. Entire sections have never been walked by any scientist. Tribal people living deep in the Congo describe a creature called Imela Antuka, a massive animal with a single horn on its head and a long, heavy tail. They say it kills elephants on contact. Scientists immediately thought of a Ceratopsian dinosaur. Same single horn, same massive tail, same body shape. But Ceratopsians were wiped out 66 million years ago. So what is it? The two rhinoceros species found in Africa both have two horns and short tails. Imela Antuka has one horn and a long tail. That matches neither species alive today. But millions of years ago, animals like Arseniotherium roamed Africa. Single-horned rhino-like creatures with long, powerful bodies. Could a relative of these ancient animals still be living in the sections of the Congo that no outsider has ever entered? The jungle has not given its answer yet. 4. The Thunderbird Native Americans across North America described the Thunderbird for thousands of years. A bird so massive, its wings blocked out the sun. So powerful, its wingbeats sounded like thunder. Large enough to carry a full-grown man into the sky. Most people dismissed it as mythology. Then scientists found Argentavis magnificens, the largest flying bird that ever existed. Wingspan of 23 feet, the wingspan of a small aircraft. The largest flying bird alive today is the wandering albatross at 11 feet. Argentavis was more than double that. It could carry prey the size of a large dog with no effort. Here's the detail that changes everything. While Argentavis went extinct 6 million years ago, close relatives of the same family survived in North America until just 10,000 years ago. Right alongside early Native Americans. These people were not inventing a story. They were describing something they actually watched fly overhead. The Thunderbird was real. It just had a scientific name nobody knew until recently. 3. The Aramanthian Boar In Greek mythology, Hercules was given 12 impossible tasks as punishment. One of the hardest was capturing the Aramanthian Boar, a creature so terrifying even the gods feared it. It destroyed entire villages, killed everything in its path. Then scientists found Deodon, the largest entelodon that ever lived. It roamed North America and Europe until about 19 million years ago. Six feet tall at the shoulder, the size of a bison. Omnivorous, it ate everything. Plants, bones, other animals, carrion. Its skull was three feet long with enormous cheekbone flanges that looked unlike any modern animal. Scientists nicknamed the entire group Hell Pigs. But Deodon was not actually related to modern pigs. Its closest living relatives are hippos and whales. A creature that looks like a demonic boar, eats everything, cannot be stopped. The Greeks were not imagining the Aramanthian Boar. They were remembering an animal their ancestors actually encountered and survived to tell stories about. The Leviathan appears in the Hebrew Bible written over 2,500 years ago. A massive sea serpent so powerful that no weapon could harm it. It ruled the ocean. Everything in the water feared it. What makes Leviathan unusual is that nearly identical sea serpent legends appear in ancient Norse mythology, Greek mythology, Polynesian mythology and Mesopotamian mythology. Cultures that never had contact with each other, all describing the same creature. That is not a coincidence. Scientists found Palaeophus Colosseus, a prehistoric sea snake that lived 50 million years ago. As long as four cars placed end to end. But the real connection is Livyatan Malvilii, a prehistoric sperm whale with 14-inch teeth in both its upper and lower jaw. The most powerful predatory whale that ever existed. Scientists named it Livyatan directly after the mythical Leviathan because nothing else fit. Ancient sailors encountering massive bones washing ashore or seeing enormous shapes moving in deep water had one word for what they saw, Leviathan. In the early 2000s, Japanese sailors near Antarctica reported something in the water. A massive pale white creature with long humanoid arms and a body shaped like a mermaid. They called it Ningen. Photos circulated online. Most were confirmed fake, but Antarctica is one of the least explored places on Earth. The surrounding waters are deep, dark and barely mapped. Scientists have two theories. First, Thalassicnus, an aquatic ground sloth that swam using long, powerful front arms. Its fossils are found almost entirely in Chile and Argentina, the two countries closest to Antarctica on Earth. Second, Aelurolamna, an extinct shark with unusually long fins that gave it an almost humanoid silhouette underwater. Fossil records say it disappeared 66 million years ago. But sharks are the greatest survivors in history. The coelacanth was declared extinct for 65 million years. Then a fisherman pulled one out of the ocean off South Africa in 1938, alive, completely unbothered. Antarctica's waters are enormous, mostly unexplored. The deepest sections have never been reached by any technology we currently have. Until every meter of those frozen waters is mapped, nobody can say for certain what is down there. Which of these seven surprised you the most? Tell me in the comments. Subscribe if you want to see more mysteries like this.